Keith Roy: Targeting a 500 Cycling Centuries Streak... For the Second Time

If you want to ride at least 100 miles a day for 666 days straight, you’re going to need peanut butter. Lots of peanut butter.

“It’s the most calorie-dense food there is,” Keith Roy laughs as I interrupt his daily 100-mile ride on his indoor turbo trainer to speak to him at his home in Finger Lakes, New York. “I put honey and butter on the bread as well – it's a power-packed fuel. I get through over a pound a day most days.”

If you look at Roy’s Strava stats, it’s not surprising to see why he needs so much fuel. When I speak to him, he’s on his 475th consecutive imperial century, each taking around 6-7.5 hours of riding. Last year, he cycled more than 50,000 miles / 80,500km with 4 million feet / 1.2 million meters of elevation gain. His 2014 Cervelo S5 bike alone has racked up 225,700 miles / 363,336km. “When I bought it, my girlfriend couldn’t believe how expensive it was. She said, ‘You better ride that damn bike!’”

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This was also because, at the time, Roy was only just starting to make the transition from strength training to cycling. “I loved strength training, I’d been doing it for years, and I didn’t like doing cardio,” he says. “However, I felt like I needed to add some cardio into my routine, so I thought I could cycle to and from the gym as a warm-up/cool down.”

He paid a visit to his local bike shop, where the owner handed him a bike to try. “I rode it around the parking lot, and within 10 seconds I thought, ‘I have to get one of these.’ It was fun – it felt like flying. I just connected with it immediately.”

For the love of cycling

He enjoyed the sport so much that he completed his first 100-mile ride just months later, something most cyclists build up to over a number of years. He upgraded to the aforementioned Cervelo S5 and, slowly, riding the bike began to replace his strength training.

“Being fit on a bike and the experience you get from riding can't be beaten,” he enthuses. “It's one of the best experiences there is. Sometimes I ride to get away from problems, sometimes I just want to go and relax, sometimes I want to adventure in new areas – every day there's a different motivating factor.”

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Strava was one motivating factor to further his cycling progression. “When I first heard about Strava, I thought it was a cool idea, and when I joined and started doing all these rides, I was trying to test myself. But I also met my girlfriend on the platform because she was a cyclist and was on Strava, and it's also how I met a lot of my best cycling buddies – they reached out to me saying, ‘You're an absolute animal, we need to link up for a ride.’ Strava has had a huge influence on me – it's actually changed the course of my life."

Finding Zwift

Online virtual training program Zwift has also played a key role in Roy’s journey. As a committed gamer, the platform appealed to him as soon as he first heard about it.

“Initially, I thought, ‘That’s stupid – I’ll never ride inside.’ Then a co-worker gave me a dumb trainer, and I thought why not do the free trial of Zwift? I had fun with it, so I quickly bought a Tacx Neo trainer. I learned a lot from Zwift – like, initially I thought there’s no way people can be riding 2.5 watts per kg. It’s impossible. Now I can do it all day long without thinking about it!”

In 2019, he upped his Zwift miles, surpassing 40,000 for the year. Then, in 2020 when Covid locked the world down and remote work become the norm, Roy notched up even more miles. The ‘RoboPacer’ feature in Zwift also boosted his totals, “Having a constant group going at different paces that you can join and just roam around the worlds changed how and where I would ride.” Currently, he estimates he’s on around a total of 190,000 miles on the platform.

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So what does Roy have deep within him that makes him able to log mile after mile, day after day? “A lot of it is mindset, but with cycling you have to train your metabolism, too. Most people could do this if they have the right mindset, but eventually their metabolism is going to say I can't take any more food and convert this to energy. So you have to train yourself to the point where your metabolism can keep up with the length of rides you’re doing.”

Cycling at work

Another motivation for him is that climbing into the saddle day after day helps his sanity. “Working from home sitting at a desk, I found needed something else to focus on while I'm working. I keep pedaling away while I work just to keep moving. There's a different reason every day for me to keep wanting to move, but at this point, with the streak, it's easier to keep it going than it is to stop.”

Logging these mind-melting distances day after day has taught Roy an important lesson: if you think a physical challenge appears insurmountable – whether it’s riding 25 miles or your first century – the key to success is having confidence in yourself that you will achieve your goal. “A lot of people over-plan things, spending more time on planning than they do actually doing it. Often, it’s best to just get out there and see what you can do.”

So what’s next for a man who spends seven hours in the saddle every day? “One of my cycling friends wants to do an Everest [riding the height of Mt Everest – 8,850m – up and down one hill continuously]. I told him I'd do one with him. But aside from that it’s just getting out and enjoying new routes and big rides.”